


Troll Inception

by marathemara



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Shipping Wall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 17:43:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2159445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marathemara/pseuds/marathemara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat thinks Inception sounds stupid until Rose plants an idea in his head with a little posthumous help from Nepeta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Troll Inception

"Egbert!" Karkat was on his way, and he wasn't happy. John turned around in time to see him barge in, waving one of John's own DVDs. "Egbert, what the fuck is this?"

"Hi, Karkat!" John chirped, determined to be happy in the face of his friend's perpetual bad mood. "What's up?"

"This shit is up," Karkat fumed, thrusting the DVD under John's nose. "Now tell me what the fuck it is."

John crossed his eyes to read the title on the case. "That's _Inception_!" he said. "It's the third best movie ever made, after _Con Air_ and--"

"Shut up," Karkat snapped. "Just shut up and tell me what it's about."

"Well, it's about a team of criminals who enter people's dreams to steal their secrets, and--"

"No, dumbass. Tell me the troll title."

John thought about it. "In which...a man framed by his matesprit for her own death and unable to come to terms with it becomes an international dream criminal. A rich guy offers him a job that will let him go home, and he hires a girl who becomes his...moirail?...and learns all his secrets in spite of his trying to keep her safe. And then she learns everything and has to aus...auspis..."

"Auspisticize, you idiot."

"Yeah, that! Between the man and his guilt over his wife's death."

Karkat had already made up his mind. "That's even stupider than _Con Air_. You can't auspisticize between a person and an abstract concept, that's--"

Someone coughed behind them, breaking Karkat's train of thought. They turned around and saw Rose.

"I beg to differ," she said. "Actually, Nepeta begs to differ. Follow me." And she was gone just as quickly as she'd arrived, down the corridor Karkat had just come up.

Karkat's jaw dropped. "We should probably follow her," John suggested.

"Yeah, whatever."

……

Rose led them into the depths of the meteor, down to a circle of transportalizer pads that Karkat had never seen before, and onto one with Nepeta's sign drawn on the surface. Karkat felt a lump in his throat. So much could have been prevented...if his past self had been a better leader.

The transportalizer took them to a corridor paved in chilly gray tile. A couple of old teapots lay in corners, their contents slowly turning into little ecosystems of their own. Rose finally stopped in front of a wall covered in chalk drawings. Karkat counted half a dozen people, plus a few humans and Carapacians.

"Nepeta told me this was here when I met her in a dream bubble about a week ago," Rose explained. "This is the last version of her shipping wall."

"Wow," John said, backing up against the far wall to get a better view. "She shipped me with the Mayor? Troll romance sure is weird."

Karkat almost couldn't bear to look. It wasn't that he regretted not sharing Nepeta's red feelings now that she was dead, or at least that's what he told himself. He didn't look at that panel, or the one with Feferi and Sollux...Vriska and Terezi caliginous made a depressing amount of sense, and that left very few panels he could look at without feeling nauseous.

Rose waved at him and pointed to one of these. It was an ashen triad with Jade between Karkat and...

Karkat felt his jaw drop again. Between Karkat and _himself_. 

_if i hate myself so much why dont i hatemarry myself_

Karkat ran.

John watched him charge off in the direction of the transportalizer. "What happened?" he asked Rose.

"I made my point. That's all." Rose smiled in a way John found disconcerting. But he was distracted by the floating sensation of being about to wake up, and didn't ask.

"Rose, I think I'm going back now. It was nice to see you."

"It was nice to see you too," Rose said, still smiling as John faded away.

……

**One hour later**

Dave was bored. The rhymes just weren't coming today. He decided that the next best thing to dropping insufficiently sick beats was going to see what Karkat was up to, and wandered up the stairs to Karkat's room and let himself in.

"Hey, Karkles," he called.

"Go away, Strider," Karkat called back from in front of the television. Dave came closer in time to see the peaceful Parisian street on the screen fold up at right angles and then down on itself until the tops of buildings touched.

"Dude, are you watching _Inception_?"

"I said go away!"

Dave slid onto the couch next to Karkat. "No way, dude, it's just getting to the good part."

Karkat sighed. "All right, Strider, you can stay. Just keep your fucking talk blaster shut."


End file.
